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Information scientists may find value in studying cultural information evolution and information diffusion through memetics. Information studies in memetics have often found datafication in memetics research difficult. Meanwhile, current memetic scholarship elsewhere is abundant in data due to their focus on Internet artifacts. This paper offers a way to close the datafication gap for information researchers by associating information data with “differences” between memetic documents.

This work offers a joint theory and methodology invested in information-oriented memetics. This methodology of differences is developed from a content analysis of difference on a collection of images with visual similarities.

The authors find that this kind of analysis provides a heuristic method for quantitatively bounding where one meme ends and another begins. The authors also find that this approach helps describe the dynamics of memetic media in such a way that the authors can datafy information or cultural evolution more clearly.

Here the authors offer an approach for studying cultural information evolution through the study of memes. In doing so, the authors forward a methodology of difference which leverages content analysis in order to outline how it functions practically. The authors propose a quantitative methodology to assess differences between versions of document contents in order to examine what a particular meme is. The authors also move toward showing the information structure which defines a meme.

Most academic work on sustainability has been focused on the organizational level, reflecting the popular “business case for sustainability” idea. However, organizations are certainly not the only locus of entrepreneurial action for sustainability, nor are they the most ideal. This chapter reports on a six-year study of the Sustainability Consortium, a collaboration started in 1999 between large companies that were seeking to lead their industry through innovative initiatives for sustainability. The findings, based on 60 interviews and many other sources of data, identify eight “ecologies of entrepreneurial action,” all of which were critical for driving change. These ecologies are: Individual Aspiration; Network Affiliation; Process Optimization; Entrepreneurial Innovation; Value Chain Collaboration; Industry/Sector Coordination; System-Wide Integration; and Social Transformation. As shown by complexity theory, the interdependent and interconnected nature of these ecologies means that only by expanding beyond organizationally focused endeavors can we help generate the social transformation that will lead to a sustainable world.

Drawing upon ideas of holistic systems in conjunction with practice and complexity theories, the purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective examination of sensemaking within business networks.

This is a conceptual paper that uses a meteorological metaphor to figuratively describe sensemaking within business-to-business relationships. To address this, the authors explore holonic sensemaking practices at a local, micro-level.

The weather metaphor emphasizes that local and general conditions, although qualitatively different, are mutually constituted. Consequently, local conditions must be taken seriously as they are the crucible of experience where sense is made in the moment and in particular spaces involving specific people. The suggestion is that any failure to account for these “emic” conditions is partial and flawed. The authors propose that an emphasis upon general conditions and nomothetic theories centered on cognitive generalizations has confined sensemaking theorizing. In particular, local sensemaking realities, which are characterized by embodied, communicative and cognitive practices, has been somewhat overlooked.

The main implication is that there should be greater attention to process constituted by an equal focus on sub-processes of embodied sensing and semiotic sub-processes of talking sense, along with the already strong emphasis upon cognitive sensemaking but with greater attention to local activities. As processes of embodied perception, discourse within atmosemiospheres and cognitive sensemaking are qualitatively different, the authors argue for methodological diversity which should enable investigation of these inter-animating sub-processes more comprehensively and with greater equanimity.

In industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) terms, this means placing the spotlight on the activities component in the actor-resources-activities model. The implication is that there is a need to educate networkers in improvization and bricolaged use of their bodies, communication and minds for concrete, local and practical contexts and ease off on theorizing.

The authors explore the consequences of examining embodied and communicative sensemaking’ influences at micro-level mean, followed by an examination of how sensemaking within the IMP tradition has predominantly focused upon macro-level cognition in contrast to sensemaking more broadly, which has incorporated micro-level sensemaking including embodied, communicative influences alongside cognitive effects. The authors conclude with exploring the implications of a meteorological metaphor for research and practice.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to bring data to suggest that group processes have a biological base, lodged in human neurology as it evolved over the last 7 million years.

Design/methodology/approach – The method for discovering the neurological basis of group processes is labelled evolutionary sociology, and this method revolves around: (1) cladistic analysis of traits of distant ancestors to humans and the great apes, with whom humans share a very high proportion of genes, (2) comparative neurology between the great apes and humans that can inform us about how the brains of humans were rewired from the structures shared by the last common ancestor to humans and apes, and (3) ecological analysis of the habitats and niches that generated selection pressures on the neurology of apes and hominins.

Findings – A key finding is that most of the interpersonal processes that drive group processes are neurologically based and evolved before the brain among hominins was sufficiently large to generate systems of symbols organized in cultural texts remotely near the human measure. There is, then, good reason to study the neurological basis of behavior because neurology explains more about the dynamics of interpersonal behavior than does culture, which was a very late arrival to the hominin line.

Research implications – One implication of these findings is that social scientific analysis of interpersonal processes and group dynamics can no longer assume that groups are solely a constructed process, mediated by culture and social structure. There were powerful selection pressures during the course of hominin evolution to increase hominin sociality and especially group formation, which required considerable rewiring of the basic ape brain. Since groups are not “natural” to apes in general and even to an evolved ape-like humans, it is important to discover how humans ever became group-organizing animals. The answer resides in the dramatic enhancing of emotions in hominins and humans, which shifts attention away from the neocortex to the older subcortical areas of the brain. Once this shift is made, theorizing and research, as well as public views on human sociality, need to be recast as, first, an evolved biological trait and, only second, as a most tenuous and fragile of a big-brained animal using language and culture to construct its social world.

Originality/value – The value of this kind of analysis is to liberate sociology and the social sciences in general from simplistic views that, because humans have language and can use language to construct culture and social structures, the underlying biology and neurology of human action is not relevant to understanding the social world. Indeed, just the opposite is the case: to the extent that social scientists insist upon a social constructionists research agenda, they will fail to conceptualize and perform research on more fundamental forces in the social world, including group dynamics.

The professional development (PD) of teachers is vital to student learning, yet PD continues to be plagued by positivist assumptions and low teacher buy-in. Because PD is based on persuasion, and because the roles of PD providers and receivers are not as discrete as they appear, rhetorical theory offers a valuable framework for understanding teacher PD. This study applied rhetorical theory to educator PD to elucidate the complex roles that educators take on as the event unfolds, whether in person or on social media.

This collective instrumental case study used a holistic design structure to examine how educators embrace, resist or otherwise respond to the roles they are given in PD in person and using social media; and how educators use the affordances of X (formerly Twitter) to shift rhetorical roles in X-based PD activities. A taxonomy was developed to apply the theory accurately and consistently. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and participants’ PD-related X use. Interviews were analyzed using descriptive coding by theme. X data was analyzed in three dimensions by use type, topic and rhetorical move.

The participants exhibited enthusiasm about both receiving and providing PD. Analysis of the participants’ perceptions of their PD and of their PD-related X use revealed shifting and layered ways they embrace, resist and otherwise engage with the roles they are given in PD, as well as the complex ways they used the affordances of X to engage with all of the available roles online.

In examining teacher PD using an ecological model of the rhetorical situation, this case study demonstrated the usefulness of rhetoric as a framework for PD that recognizes the nuanced and powerful roles teachers fulfill in their own PD activities in person and on social media.

The domain of study on mediated suffering is ensconced within an Orientalist paradigm which ideologically structures our visuality and gaze. The consignment of suffering through bodies of alterity and the geo-politics of the Global South encodes the coloniality of power as a dominant reading. It then naturalizes the West as the voyeur in its consumption of the abject bodies of the Global South. Creating a binary through this East-West polarization in the oeuvre of suffering as a realm of study, it creates the hegemony of the West as the moral guardian of suffering, imbuing it with the right to accord pity and compassion to the lesser Other. Beyond elongating the Orientalist trajectory which lodged the body politic of the Global South as a sustained ideological site of suffering, it hermeneutically seals the East as irredeemable, ordaining it through the gaze over the Other as a mode of coloniality. In countering this Eurocentric proposition, this chapter contends that this coloniality of gaze needs further rumination and new sensibilities in the study of mediated suffering, particularly following 9/11 and the shifting of the geo-politics of suffering in which the West is dispossessed through its own manufactured ideologies of the ‘War on Terror’ such that it is under constant threat of terrorist attacks and through the movement of the displaced Other into the Global North. Besieged and entrapped through its own pathologies of risks and threats, the West is projected through its own victimhood and the politics of the Anthropocene within which risks are seemingly democratized by environmental degradation as an overarching threat for all of humanity. Despite these shifts in the global politics, the scholarship of suffering is locked into this polarity. The chapter interrogates this innate crisis within this field of scholarship.

This paper aims to propose LARPnography as a more holistic method to probe the emergence of plausible futures, drawing on embodied embedded cognition literature and the emerging consumer practice of live-action role-playing (LARP). Current research methods for probing the future of markets and society rely mainly on expert judgment (i.e. Delphi), imagery or simulation of possible futures (i.e. scenario and simulation) and perspective taking (i.e. role-playing). The predominant focus on cognitive abstraction limits the insights researchers can extract from more embodied, sensorial and experiential approaches.

LARPnography is a qualitative method seeking to immerse participants within a plausible future to better understand the social and market dynamics that may unfold therein. Through careful planning, design, casting and fieldwork, researchers create the preconditions to let participants experience what the future may be and gather critical insights from naturalistic observations and post-event interviews.

Owing to its interactive nature and processual focus, LARPnography is best suited to investigate the adoption and diffusion of innovation, market emergence phenomena and radical societal changes, including the rise of alternative societies.

Different from previous foresight methods, LARPnography creates immersive and perceptually stimulating replicas of plausible futures that research participants can inhabit. The creation of a fictional yet socio-material world ensures that socially constructed meaning is enriched by phenomenological and visceral insights.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the diverse definitions of sustainability in higher education, focusing on the rhetorical uses of the term among various institutions within the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).

The paper begins with an overview of the term sustainability in political and public discourse, using that as a gateway to understanding the rhetorical uses of the term. Through this framework, the paper begins a vital discussion about university texts and what they reveal about sustainability in US higher education.

The author finds that university definitions of sustainability reveal a similar malleability and fluidity as definitions in political and public discourse, while at the same time revealing particular trends in the ways in which concepts of interconnection, technological problem-solving and temporality persist in definitions of the term in higher education.

This analysis is limited to definitions of sustainability used by several representative institutions within AASHE. Further studies should provide a more comprehensive analysis of a larger sampling of AASHE institutions as well as universities not affiliated with AASHE.

Administrators and educators at institutes of higher education must account for the ways in which definitions of sustainability are tied to an institution’s goals, agendas and material circumstances. Developing a better understanding of how such definitions emerge can provide greater clarity in enacting change.

This paper melds together rhetorical theories on sustainability with broader research on the use of the term in higher education. As such, it offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on rhetoric, sustainability and higher education.

This study aims to explore the propensity of university students to use different sustainable transport modes, taking into account individual and specific trip characteristics, as well as students’ psychological traits (i.e. attitudes).

Using the transport mode preferences of 827 students who responded to a travel survey, a two-step analysis is conducted. The first step examines the effects of individual characteristics, travel experience and origin or destination features on students’ stated preferences (i.e. self-selected values assigned to personal attitudes). The second step analyses students’ travel mode choices, given their intrinsic mobility attitudes.

The results suggest that informing students about environmental issues increases their propensity to use sustainable mobility, leading to an average decrease in private transport usage of 5.8 per cent. Interestingly, improving the public transport service and promoting sustainable transport mobility have different impacts on individual campus areas. For campuses located in the city centre and in the historical hamlet, improvements in public transport are found to decrease solo driving by 3.3 per cent and 5.3 per cent, respectively. In suburban areas, this value increases to 9.5 per cent.

This work makes two contributions to the literature. First, it focuses on an unexplored setting, namely, that of a multi-campus university, with districts located in three different areas. This is used to explain how students are influenced by their travel experience and the cultural framework in which they are embedded. Second, the two-step analysis leads to a deeper understanding of the differences between attitudes and “intrinsic attitudes”, and their relative influence on the preferred alternative.

This chapter discusses the application of community informatics (CI) principles in the rural Southern and Central Appalachian (SCA) region to further the teaching of information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy concepts in courses that formed part of two externally funded grants, “Information Technology Rural Librarian Master’s Scholarship Program Part I” (ITRL) and “Part II” (ITRL2), awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program to the School of Information Sciences (SIS) at the University of Tennessee (UT).

The chapter documents ICT use in ITRL and ITRL2 to extend librarian technology literacy training, allowing these public information providers to become change agents in the twenty-first century. It discusses aspects of CI that influenced these two projects and shaped the training of future rural library leaders embedded in traditionally underrepresented areas to further social justice and progressive changes in the region’s rural communities.

The chapter demonstrates the role that CI principles played in the context of ITRL and ITRL2 from project inception to the graduation of the rural librarians with examples of tangible IT services/products that the students developed in their courses that were directly applicable and tailored to their SCA contexts.

ITRL and ITRL2 provided a unique opportunity to apply a CI approach to train information librarians as agents of change in the SCA regions to further economic and cultural development via technology and management competencies. These change agents will continue to play a significant role in community building and community development efforts in the future.